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Police: Gunman Kills Two, Wounds Nine, Kills Self; Lafayette Hospital to Hold News Conference. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired July 24, 2015 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[14:00:10] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me here on this Friday.

We are standing by for a hospital news conference on the victims of a tragic shooting inside a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.

But, first, I want to begin with this two women, 33-year-old Jillian Johnson, and 21-year-old Mayci Breaux. They went to the movie theaters Thursday night to laugh, to see a comedy, only to become the victims of this real life horror.

Police in Louisiana say this man, 59-year-old John Russell Houser shot and ultimately killed both of them as he opened fire at the Grand 14 Movie Theater in Lafayette. Nine others were wounded in the shooting rampage and close to 300 people in that building ran, ran for their lives. Some of them, young children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAUREN DELTENBECK, WATCHING "MINIONS" WHEN GUNFIRE RANG OUT: I could have been shot. Like, I didn't know where the shooter was. I don't know where he could have been. I don't know if he could have gone into our theater and shoot us and I was just so afraid.

LILY CORMIER, WATCHING "MINIONS" WHEN GUNFIRE RANG OUT: Everyone was panicking. They were kind of doing the same thing as us. They were running to their cars.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Police say Houser shot himself after trying to escape. So, officials admit it's possible a motive may never be known but we do now know his family involuntarily had him committed to a mental facility in 2008, according to court documents. His then wife took other extreme measures. We'll get into that in just a moment.

But investigators, they are now asking for tips to help answer the many, many questions they now have.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. MICHAEL EDMONTON, SUPERINTENDENT, LOUISIANA STATE POLICE: Why did he walk into that theater? Why did he fire 13 times? Why did he turn around and go back in there? Why did he leave his keys on top of a tire on his car? Why did he live in a Motel 8? Why did he have wigs in there and glasses and all those types of things, any little thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDIWN: All right. With me now, I have Alexandra Field.

And so, these court documents -- they show -- when you look back at some of these details -- how frightened his own family was of him.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and this goes back to 2008 and at that time, the family is saying, this is written in these court documents, for the protective order, that he has a history of mentality health issues, that he had suffered from manic depression and/or bipolar disorder.

And it seems that there's evidence in these documents, first of all, because they are filing for protective order, but also because the documents go on to indicate that the wife was so worried about his volatile mental state that she has removed all guns and/or weapons from their home. That's when they had him involuntary committed to a mental facility. The documents go on to describe that Houser had become upset at the prospect of his daughter's impending wedding and had threatened that the wedding might not occur.

The protective order went into effect for his wife, his daughter and his daughter's fiance. That was his then-wife. The order eventually lifted in 2009. But we have been digging into Houser's history, and what we've learned from the Russell County sheriff in Alabama is that he was evicted from his home in Alabama a year ago. We also know that back in 2006, he had filed for a concealed carry permit which he was denied.

BALDWIN: Denied.

FIELD: Because of a previous arson arrest and it seems that that case may have been dismissed, but that permit was denied. So, no word on how he would have obtained the handgun that police say that he brought into this movie theater.

We're trying to understand to our best ability, if you can begin to understand, what would motivate someone to go into this theater, had he written anything, had he said anything that would indicate any kind of planning, any reason that he would go into this theater specifically in Lafayette where we don't know about any apparent ties.

What we have found is some social media history. He seems to have gone largely silent on social media after 2013, but prior to that, he was very active on a political forum posting hundreds of messages on all kinds of topics, everything from immigration to women's rights to surveillance cameras, to the Boston marathon bombing and he has an opportunity on this forum to describe a little bit about himself. At one point, he writes in the biography section that he believes the U.S. will be "Mad Max" in five years and that seems to be a reference to those post apocalyptic films.

He also goes on under a category which asks you to talk about your family, he writes, "No family is safe in the U.S. environment."

And, Brooke, those words are chilling today. But this is a small snapshot of what this person was thinking, how he wanted to express himself at this time. We know, though, that police have not been able to uncover any motive. We only know that the family at one point said that he had a history of mental illness.

BALDWIN: They haven't said publicly what brought him from Alabama to Lafayette. He's been in this motel since early July, disguises, glasses and wigs found there. We're going to talk to members of law enforcement and try to get some of those answers. And also, there's a news conference actually from Alabama next hour.

[14:05:02] But thank you so much for just some of the details you were able to provide on this man.

I want to bring in now Randall Mann. He's the vice president of marketing for the Acadian Ambulance. And he is there in Louisiana. He responded to the scene. And most importantly here, his 21-year-old daughter was inside that movie theater sitting near the shooter.

Mr. Mann, thank you so much for joining me.

And I have to just begin by asking, how is your daughter?

RANDALL MANN, ACADIAN AMBULANCE: Well, thank you very much. She's doing well. She's obviously traumatized but physically unhurt. She feels very grateful for that, feels a lot of sorrow and a little bit of survivor's guilt quite honestly. But she's a very strong and resilient young lady.

BALDWIN: How did you find out what happened?

MANN: Actually, from her. We live literally two blocks away from the theater and she and her friend went to the movie and my wife and I were sitting in the backyard and Emily and her friend burst into the backyard and said, "First of all, we're fine, we're fine, but there was a shooter at the movie theater," and it wasn't even registering with me. I -- she was OK, physically unharmed.

So, I grabbed my keys and got in the car because I know Acadian to be responding to this incident and before I even got -- then I started hearing sirens, it was that early. And we got back up here and there were just a few police cars. They were still evacuating the building. We already had to ambulances --

BALDWIN: Sir, let me cut you off. Forgive me. I apologize. I want to come back to you. We're now getting an update on some of the survivors in the Lafayette General Hospital.

Let's listen to these hospital officials.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I also want to introduce Sergeant Lajey (ph) who is here representing Lafayette's police force. Thank you for being here with us.

We have a lot of out-of-town guests. So I just want to do little house keeping. Lafayette General Medical Center is a 365-staff bed facility. We just built a brand-new emergency room that is over 32,000 square feet. And we have new state-of-the-art operating rooms.

We see over 65,000 emergency room visits a year and we also perform over 7,000 surgeries a year. We will introduce our speakers, starting with David Callecod, the president of our health system. We'll take questions at the end so I ask for your patience until after both Mr. Callecod and our physicians have spoken.

So I will turn it over right now to David Callecod. He's the president of the Lafayette General Health.

DAVID CALLECOD, PRESIDENT, LAFEYETTE GENERAL HOSPITAL: Thank you, Darryl (ph).

On behalf of the entire Lafayette General Health family, we certainly -- I want to express my condolences and they go out to all of the families, all of the folks in this very close-knit community that have been affected by the horrific events of yesterday evening.

We're a very close-knit family here at Lafayette General and we certainly had many ties to the victims as well.

Mayci Breaux, one of the victims, actually is an x-ray student. She was scheduled to begin radiology school here at Lafayette General, just in a few days and just two weeks ago toured the facility and met many of our staff. So, this really -- it hurts for our staff.

Jillian Johnson also was very well known to our staff and our community -- a very successful business owner, Red Arrow Workshop, also a very talented musician that really touched many folks here in our community with her unbelievable talent.

We are deeply saddened by the events that have transpired but we're also very thankful for the unbelievable job that our local emergency response personnel Acadian Ambulance performed and also the tremendous job that our local police departments did in responding to this horrific incident.

I also want to take time to thank the many hospitals health systems throughout the country that have reached out to us over the past few hours, expressing their concern, also asking if there's anything that they can do to help in this situation. The hospital community throughout the country, I want to thank each and every one of you.

Lafayette General received a total of five patients. Three of those patients arrived via EMS. And two of the patients were actually brought by private vehicles. All five of the patients sustained actual gunshot wounds.

[14:10:03] Three of those patients arrived and were under a level one trauma status at our facility and another was classified as a level two trauma. Now, as Darryl mentioned, we are in the process of becoming a level

two trauma center at our facility and all of the protocols were put in place for that certification were absolutely put in place last evening. Our staff responded very appropriately, our medical community, our physicians responded in an unbelievable way. We had certainly the situation well planned for and it really goes to the wonderful work that our trauma team has been putting together over the past 12 months.

A level one code trauma that I mentioned is called when a patient sustains a gunshot wound to head, neck or torso or the extremities proximal to the knee or the elbow. Two of the patients were treated and released last evening while three patients were admitted to the hospital. One of the patients that were admitted required surgery and another required admittance to our intensive care unit. They are now in stable condition.

I want to now introduce to you the Dr. Foster Kordisch, who serves as our ER trauma doctor at our facility. He was one of our attending physicians in the emergency room last evening. Thank you.

Foster?

DR. FOSTER KORDISCH, ER TRAUMA DOCTOR: Hello. I'm Dr. Curtis.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to just real quick give some information out to people who maybe were affected by the event last night and haven't sought care yet. Acadian Area Health Service District is available to serve the community and that includes anybody who is affected by the trauma or is having difficulty with what happened last night, and they offer outpatient services, crisis intervention and psychiatric care and their number is, area code 337- 262-4100. And they are available 24/7 and they also have a 1-877 number. It's 1-877-655-8241.

I want to start out by saying how proud and impressed by how our emergency room performed. At no point did we feel like we are overwhelmed. We are on a routine basis a very busy emergency room and last night was no exception.

And, in fact, in addition to the traumas we had yesterday, we also were sending four medical patients to the intensive care unit. The work with our surgical services and all our ancillary staff was phenomenal. And the extra staff that came in was generally very appreciative in our whole medical community as a whole was very supportive and very helpful on something that happened since not at a time when, you know, not (INAUDIBLE)

And I'll answer any questions after Dr. Dennis Eschete who is our hospital trauma coordinator.

DR. DENNIS ESCHETE, TRAUMA COORDINATOR: Thank you, Dr. Kordisch.

As previously stated, we did receive five patients last night. Two were immediately discharged and three were admitted into the hospital. Two were admitted under stable condition. One was admitted under critical condition which has since been downgraded and will be in stable condition on the floor this afternoon.

All of our patients are expected to have a full recovery soon and will soon be discharged from the hospital. I'd like to commend all of our ER physicians, our staff and for being ready and prepared to take care of these critically injured patients.

I'm very proud personally and our community should definitely be proud of the trauma program that we started from scratch and we have built to help better serve this community. I will stand up here and answer any questions if you guys have any. Thank you.

CALLECOD: We'll now take questions.

REPORTER: Do you have but one patient that was critical (INAUDIBLE)?

CALLECOD: So we can really only comment on the patients that we treated here.

[14:15:00] We do know there were a total of nine patients at the scene that were transported by EMS. And three patients were sent to each of the three hospitals in Lafayette and then we received two patients via private vehicle.

REPORTER: Doctor, can you speak to the number of wounds that the victims received and extrapolate the distance from the muzzle to the wound?

KORDISCH: Extrapolating distance from muzzle to wound is very poor unless it's very close range. I'll leave all of that to forensics and the police department in the corners.

(INAUDIBLE)

KORDISCH: Three of them were.

REPORTER: Had torso --

KORDISCH: No, it was just torso and limbs.

REPORTER: Were they discussing the incident when they arrived?

KORDISCH: Most of them could not get a clear picture of what happened. Generally, they painted a picture of confusion and panic.

REPORTER: Have they spoken?

KORDISCH: I see patients in the emergency room only. My care ends whenever they leave the emergency room, unless something traumatic happens on a floor. Dr. Eschete and the trauma surgical service takes care of the patients once they leave the emergency room.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

KORDISCH: Forty to -- 30 something to 80 something.

REPORTER: And (INAUDIBLE)? KORDISCH: Mix of each. One of four and three of two.

REPORTER: Can you characterize the nature of the wounds? Were they all similar?

KORDISCH: Most of them were extremity wounds. One person -- one patient had a torso wound and that's the abdomen and he had a torso wound. His wounds were in the torso and lower extremities. All of the other patients had extremity wounds, most prominently, the lower extremities.

REPORTER: Like the legs?

KORDISCH: Yes, sir.

REPORTER: It's consistent with a handgun?

KORDISCH: It's consistent with a gun.

REPORTER: And I know that all of the hospitals go through training for these active shooter type of events. Did it just kick in and y'all knew what you were supposed to do and all of the planning worked well last night when the patients came here in coordination with the other hospitals?

KORDISCH: The coordination at the other hospitals was actually done at a higher level than me. It was done with Arcadian are the paramedics on the scene and they dispersed the patients.

As far as our end, the training, you know, worked great. I mean, this is what we do. This is why we're backing a trauma center. It did not tax us in any way.

Now, if there were more patients and we certainly would have started to feel very uncomfortable, certainly we didn't want a scene like that. But the nurses, the techs, the ancillary staff, the consultants worked very well together and no patients' care was delayed because of the volume of patients, and no patient who was in the emergency room was delayed as well.

CALLECOD: So in regard to that question, I think the community, the hospital community responded unbelievably to this event, and certainly all of that training that we do throughout the year played out.

This is a community that has been certainly, from a disaster standpoint, you know, we have hurricanes and other events that have tested the hospital community and so we responded very well at all three of the facilities. I think the hospital response was equal to the unbelievable response we've seen from the police getting there within a minute and Acadian there within six minutes after the event occurred. So, I can't say enough about the way the hospitals have performed.

I also wanted to mention, you know, there's been a lot of examples of heroism that occurred in this event and we at the hospital recognize folks for making a difference and actually one of our employees, Mr. Ronald Thomas, who serves as our facilities and security director at our Lafayette General Surgical Hospital, he and his wife were at the theater getting popcorn as the shooting occurred. And Ronald and his wife transported one of the victims to the hospital last evening.

And so I just want to personally recognize Ronald and his wife for making a difference in doing the right thing in this incident and it certainly represents what the employees of Lafayette General are all about.

REPORTER: You said you expected things to at least some point (INAUDIBLE). Is there any idea how long that will take?

CALLECOD: That's actually a good question.

ESCHETE: So the question is, how soon will they recover? Everybody's treatment is different depending on their type of injury. So I don't like to give a specific date but I can tell you, in the near future, within days.

REPORTER: Doctor, in terms of ability, did any of them suffer any serious injuries affecting mobility?

ESCHETE: None.

REPORTER: And the patient expected to be downgraded to stable condition by the end of the day, what was the extent of the injuries?

(INAUDIBLE)

ESCHETE: I think the details specifically for each patient, you know, we'll keep until the investigation is done. So, you know, in light of keeping privacy for that patient, I'll probably defer that answer.

REPORTER: Doctor, you spoke a little bit about the potential mental health needs in your community. Have you seen that in the hospital? (INAUDIBLE)

KORDISCH: I have not been notified of any uptick in patients presenting in our emergency rooms with mental health concerns. You know, I can't answer that.

And it's certainly an answer is yes. The community can't absorb something like this and just go about their day like nothing happened. As far as what to watch for, basically, if you have any issues, you need to reach out and talk to someone but especially if it starts to affect your daily activities or you think of things that are detriment to yourself or others.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)?

KORDISCH: Yes.

CALLECOD: I think on a global perspective, and certainly as a country, I think in regard to this mental health issue, I think as we look at what has happened in terms of mental health funding for care throughout the United States and specifically talking about, you know, sort of the reason behind this incident, you know, we have seen dramatic decreases in funding for mental health services throughout the United States and care has been shifted to an outpatient focus.

I think what we're seeing overall is a real lack of service for patients that are suffering from mental illness. I think we need, as a society, to really look at parity with medical care and psychiatric care in order to hopefully avoid situations like this occurring in the future.

If there's no other questions -- yes.

REPORTER: Just to wrap things up, I know you had a long night in the ER last night. how is everybody?

KORDISCH: The environment of the volume?

REPORTER: Of the E.R.

KORDISCH: The environment of the E.R., I mean, there certainly was a little bit more energy and maybe a little bit of anxiety but it really was nothing -- you know, to say that we dealt with it just like any other day is probably not doing yesterday justice, you know. But the environment of the E.R., you know, it did not affect the flow of the E.R., it did not affect the patient care.

But there definitely was a little bit more -- if energy is a good word or anxiety may not be the best word, but there was a little bit different environment in the emergency room last night.

CALLECOD: If there's no other questions, I want to thank everyone for coming here for this update. I also want to thank the many, many, many nurses and physicians.

BALDWIN: All right. You've been listening for the last 20 minutes an update on the number of the survivors at the movie theater shooting, specifically with this Lafayette General Medical Center. The tremendous response from the community, the police, hospital, nurses and doctors and staff and first responders.

[14:25:00] And just to reiterate what he just said, they received five patients, all gunshot wounds, primarily lower extremities, meaning legs, one required surgery, one did require being admitted to intensive care. So, we'll obviously keep in close contact with the hospital officials and see how they improve.

But I would love to bring Randall Mann back in. I don't know if you were able to hear the official from that hospital there, by my goodness, he spoke about where you work, Acadian, and the response from first responders.

You know, just to remind everyone, it was your 21-year-old daughter who happened in that movie theater, got out of there, came and told you, and you went to the scene right away.

Can you just tell me what it was she said, she saw, she experienced and, of course, what you saw with your own eyes? MANN: Sure. She told me that she and her friend were on the second

from the top row of the theater. The theater was mostly full, from what I understand. They were all the way on the left-hand side. Apparently the shooter was four or five seats to the right.

She said, about 20 minutes into the movie she heard one pop and she said I want to believe this is anything but a gunshot, a firecracker or something and she looked over at the noise and saw him shoot and she said in a semi-circle, just randomly, she said really like he was taking aim, just shooting, and several more shots, and her friend hit the deck as well, and she kind of scampered out.

She made the comment -- and I thought it was awesome -- it wasn't like a stampede to get out. It wasn't like people fighting each other. It was really, we need to get out of here together and fortunately she was on the opposite side of the theater from the shooter, on the same row, but on the opposite side and thank goodness he didn't aim her way. She got out unscathed.

And I do want to reiterate what they talked about in the press conference, because our whole medical community -- and I appreciate the kind words about Acadian, and our medics. But Lafayette General, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center, the three hospitals we sent patients to last night, they were just phenomenal, and the entire continuum of care in our community, we are fortunate.

BALDWIN: Yes. Just to know police arrived on the scene within 60 seconds, you guys were there within six minutes, these -- I'm sick of covering these stories, if I can be totally frank, in the wake of these, you hear about these hero stories, we've heard about the teachers, we've heard about the hospital worker who personally took one of the victims to the hospital. It sounds like a pretty special place, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Randall Mann, our best to your community and of course to your daughter. Thank you.

MANN: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, I will speak live with the head of the Louisiana state police who actually just walked out of the theater. Hear about the shooter's escape plan that included disguises and a getaway car.

Plus, someone who knew the shooter growing up. He'll join me live. And what this man kept in his yard, and more about his family life.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage. Stay with me.

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